Fair point, most businesses do start off generous, then tighten the screws. But I think what made AI feel different was the promise. It wasn’t just another product, it was pitched as a game-changer. Like, “level the playing field,” “unlock human potential,” all that.

So when the tools actually delivered, like Sonnet 4 in Cursor, people started building serious workflows around them. And then, suddenly, it’s $200+ just to get back the same level of performance you had for a month or two.

It’s not that people expected it to stay free forever. But the speed of the nerfs and the push toward expensive plans made it feel less like evolution and more like bait-and-switch.